Moon Runner Read Online Free Page A

leaving her alone.
    Ruth had abandoned her, and there had been no moon in the sky that morning,
This is the dark phase,
Mina thought.
    Along the fence, where the mower hadn’t reached, grew the purple flowers of alfilaria. Mina bent down to pick two long seedpods. “I’m not sure the Fellow Friends will last the year,” she said, threading the seedpods together.
    “Why not?” Alana asked.
    “Ruth doesn’t like me anymore. See how she’s only playing with Sammy?”
    “The Fellow Friends breaking up would be too sad.” Alana poked out her lower lip. “I wish you and Ruth would be nice to each other.”
    “Maybe I’ll just be friends with you,” Mina said quickly. With her fingernail, she poked a hole in one seedpod. She threaded the other seedpod through the hole, making a pair of scissors.
    “That wouldn’t be the same,” Alana answered.
    “I know.” Mina chopped at the air with her tiny green shears.
    The whistle blew for the fifty-meter tryouts, and the class C girls took off.
    Mina could hear the swish of Ruth’s nylon running shorts and could smell her lemony shampoo. Suddenly she thought of Sammy and Ruth playing on the ledge without her. Of the way the Fellow Friends were falling apart. Of Alana’s disappointment. Instead of trying hard, her body eased, like a rubber band that stretches and then relaxes. She fell back.
    “Ruth Largness first! Shawndra Lopez second! Liz Barret third! Cassie Corbis fourth!” Coach shouted as they each came in.
    Mina didn’t count how many other girls finished ahead of her. She could have done better. Maybe not well enough to beat Ruth, but at least well enough to place in the top four.
    The breath caught in her throat like a drink of water that had gone down the wrong way.
    In the afternoon, Mina and Ruth worked on the frog project. Instead of sitting next to Mina, Ruth took the photos to organize at a table across the room.
    Mina copied onto the poster board:
The red-eyed tree frog changes its color when it changes its mood. It can be dark green or a reddish brown.
    Ruth changed like a tree frog, too, she thought. When Mina had been only a girlie girl, Ruth had been friendly. But now that Mina competed with her, Ruth ignored her. She felt like saying
I lost the race on purpose.
Just the thought made her bite the inside of her cheek. Why was Ruth still acting so cold?
    Mina replayed the tryouts in her mind. She’d thought she didn’t care about winning, but losing had felt terrible.
    At the end of science period, Ms. Jenner rang a chime.
    Mina held the baggie open for the photos, and Ruth slid them in without touching Mina’s fingers.
    As the class sat in a circle on the rug, Ms. Jenner passed around a picture of an ancient moon goddess. “The ancient Greeks called her Hecate,” she said.
    “Why does she have three heads?” Sammy asked.
    “Can anyone guess?”
    “Like, ’cause the moon looks three different ways?” suggested Clarisa, who sat next to Mina in the circle.
    “Yes, and because of the three phases, the ancient peoples thought the moon had three different personalities,” Ms. Jenner continued. “Some thought the crescent moon looked like a knife. The full moon seems to bring blessings. People believed that in her dark phase, the moon makes people go crazy.”
    Sammy caught Alana’s attention, then traced circles in the air with his index finger.
    Alana stuck her tongue out at him.
    The moon changed the way the red-eyed tree frogs did. The way Ruth did.
    Mina thought about her own different faces. She wanted to win. She wanted to lose. She wanted to beat her friend. She wanted to keep her friend. Sometimes she just didn’t know what she wanted, who she was. There was the old stick-in-the-mud self and the new Moon Runner self and someone in between. She felt as three-faced as the moon.

At a special meeting after school, Coach sat everyone down at the lunch tables. It was time to announce the teams that would compete at Duncan Berring